Alien Contact

[sloanjh (OP)]

I just had 3 alien ships show up right on top of a GeoSurvey ship I was using to probe a new system (I was using 6 hour increments, so my sensor range was pretty much moot).  Here's the problem: my ship only has Thermal and EM sensors (no actives), which means that Aurora hasn't registered them as an alien race - their race doesn't show up on either the Diplomacy or Tactical Intelligence screen at all.

How am I suppose to start talking to them?

If scanning someone with active sensors is perceived as a hostile act, then I think we need another way to register the race associated with a thermal contact with the game.  Perhaps having an "unknown" race in the diplomacy screen which, when picked, presents a pull-down of exactly with currently existing unknown contact you want to try to communicate with.  Once communications are established, the race could be added to the diplomacy screen.

John

PS - I think this has been answered before, but I can't find the thread: how does "T480 S144/R75" break down?  T is Thermal, I think S is Shields, and I have no clue what R is.

[Steve Walmsley]

I just had 3 alien ships show up right on top of a GeoSurvey ship I was using to probe a new system (I was using 6 hour increments, so my sensor range was pretty much moot).  Here's the problem: my ship only has Thermal and EM sensors (no actives), which means that Aurora hasn't registered them as an alien race - their race doesn't show up on either the Diplomacy or Tactical Intelligence screen at all.

How am I suppose to start talking to them?

If scanning someone with active sensors is perceived as a hostile act, then I think we need another way to register the race associated with a thermal contact with the game.  Perhaps having an "unknown" race in the diplomacy screen which, when picked, presents a pull-down of exactly with currently existing unknown contact you want to try to communicate with.  Once communications are established, the race could be added to the diplomacy screen.

John

PS - I think this has been answered before, but I can't find the thread: how does "T480 S144/R75" break down?  T is Thermal, I think S is Shields, and I have no clue what R is.

At the moment there is no diplomacy for NPRs so they are all hostile. Some form of diplomacy will probably be in v4.2 as I want to concentrate on some specific changes for v4.1

T is thermal. S144/R75 is an alien active sensor detected by your EM sensors. It has a strength of 144 and a resolution of 75. You can see the ranges of hostile active sensors if the ShowSR option is checked on the Contacts tab

Steve

[sloanjh (OP)]

At the moment there is no diplomacy for NPRs so they are all hostile. Some form of diplomacy will probably be in v4.2 as I want to concentrate on some specific changes for v4.1

T is thermal. S144/R75 is an alien active sensor detected by your EM sensors. It has a strength of 144 and a resolution of 75. You can see the ranges of hostile active sensors if the ShowSR option is checked on the Contacts tab

Thanks, Steve.  So I guess that means I shouldn't walk up to them and say "Hi Guys" with a big smile on my face?  Or at least I should put my least-favorite officer in command of the ship that does

It turns out they were precursors, so they would have been hostile anyway.

A couple of things:

1)  I had just saved my DB 5 days earlier.  I restored from that DB, then replayed the exact same time sequence, except with a smaller interval when I expected contact (I had been running at 6 hour intervals).  That time, I managed to pick them up outside their active range, turn around, and run away.  You might want to think about ways to filter for potential "collisions" (passes within sensor range) of ships that don't know each other in the same system, and break motion around contact time.

2)  One really cool thing that happened is that I started getting tech info on the precursor active search system as I was running away.  It seems like a passive acquisition of an active search sensor should be enough to ID a race and put it on the tactical intel list.  OTOH, I can see the problems of having hoards of "not sure what class type" contacts on the intel list too.

John

[Steve Walmsley]

At the moment there is no diplomacy for NPRs so they are all hostile. Some form of diplomacy will probably be in v4.2 as I want to concentrate on some specific changes for v4.1

T is thermal. S144/R75 is an alien active sensor detected by your EM sensors. It has a strength of 144 and a resolution of 75. You can see the ranges of hostile active sensors if the ShowSR option is checked on the Contacts tab

Thanks, Steve.  So I guess that means I shouldn't walk up to them and say "Hi Guys" with a big smile on my face?  Or at least I should put my least-favorite officer in command of the ship that does

It turns out they were precursors, so they would have been hostile anyway.

A couple of things:

1)  I had just saved my DB 5 days earlier.  I restored from that DB, then replayed the exact same time sequence, except with a smaller interval when I expected contact (I had been running at 6 hour intervals).  That time, I managed to pick them up outside their active range, turn around, and run away.  You might want to think about ways to filter for potential "collisions" (passes within sensor range) of ships that don't know each other in the same system, and break motion around contact time.

There is some code that should do that and it has been generally working in my game, although it works best when one fleet is actually heading for the other so I can calculate closing speed and sensor ranges. With two fleets that are on tangential courses, figuring out the point at which one may enter the sensor range of the other is fairly difficult.

2)  One really cool thing that happened is that I started getting tech info on the precursor active search system as I was running away.  It seems like a passive acquisition of an active search sensor should be enough to ID a race and put it on the tactical intel list.  OTOH, I can see the problems of having hoards of "not sure what class type" contacts on the intel list too.

An interesting idea. In the real world, active sensor emissions are often unique to a particular radar and are used to pin down the possible classes of an enemy ship. I'll give this some thought.

Steve

[sloanjh (OP)]

There is some code that should do that and it has been generally working in my game, although it works best when one fleet is actually heading for the other so I can calculate closing speed and sensor ranges. With two fleets that are on tangential courses, figuring out the point at which one may enter the sensor range of the other is fairly difficult.

In both passes, I was headed right for the precursors, i.e. we were on reciprocal headings.  I suspect that one or more of the following conditions that was true in my case might be fooling your code:

1)  Precursors were parked - unless the Precursors have planetary sensors, then they were probably just sitting there (albeit with a speed reading of 5500 or so km/s).
2)  Player (as opposed to NPR) race was the one doing the moving - maybe your code is being more careful for NPRs than for players.

John